Bear Heart's Captive

Chapter 4: The Stranger

We had unplugged the phone and ignored the first couple of knocks, but eventually my father had the front desk make an extra key. I groaned when I heard it slide through the lock and open our door.

"Rise and shine, children!" he called, pulling the blankets from our beds. "Your mother's ready and wants to leave in ten minutes. So hurry up!" He unlocked the adjoining door and left it open, bellowing a firm reminder. "Ten minutes!"

I got up, showered in the shortest shower I'd taken since summer camp in the fifth grade, and examined my reddened eyes and nose in the foggy mirror.

Why was I crying? In the tender moments before fully waking, I had been without my tough outer-shell and victim to tears. I remembered that I had, indeed, loved Caleb more than it would ever matter to recall, because it obviously had never been enough. Part of me wanted to let the pain leave me in its most natural form, yet another part feared it would never truly leave and I would forever cry. It was easy to forget in the early hours of the morning, when the day was fresh and beautiful, that I wasn't supposed to love Caleb anymore.

I dried my thick hair with a towel and admired how long it had grown since I'd cut it last. Even if my eyes were a dull shade of bluish-grey and my skin tone was only really nice in the summer, at least I could be proud of my hair. I added some mascara to my lashes and was ready to go after saturating my locks with some leave-in conditioner. They had the delightful habit of drying in gentle waves, so I refused to use a blow dryer if it wasn't freezing.

Once we got downstairs to the breakfast hall, I'd moved past being sad and miserable and embraced feeling numb. I got some oatmeal and coffee and sat opposite my brother, who somehow always managed to eat at least one serving of everything the hotel had to offer. My mom pulled up a chair and sat on my left.

"You guys sleep well?" she asked.

Adam nodded and pointed to the chocolate muffin stuffed inside his mouth.

"Adam," she chided, sighing for his lack of table manners. She turned to me. "What about you Charli?" Her expression was hopeful as it searched for some kind of forgiveness on my end. After all, I knew she wanted to make amends. Resentment had already brought me to the point of exhaustion, so I answered in my usual, bored tone to let her know I wasn't that mad anymore.

"Fine, I guess."

"All right, everybody, finish up," my dad called, flipping the ring of keys to our rental car around on his finger. "We've got about a half-hour drive to the reservation and I'm not sure exactly where to go, so we'd better head out soon."

Dad scrolled through his iPhone, trying to study the map while meandering to the car in the Birkenstock sandals he always wore on vacation. He came home from our last trip to Hawaii with brown and white feet because he only took them off before going into the ocean. Whenever I saw them in his closet at home, I remembered fun times baking in the sun and the smell of seawater in my hair. They didn't belong here; in that moment, I hated those sandals for not knowing their place. This was not a vacation.

We pulled onto the two-lane highway and chugged down the road with nothing to see save for the earth and sky. The blades of grass rippled beneath the caress of a delicate breeze, reminding me of my bizarre dream of whales and a yellow sea. It was less disturbing now. Under a brilliant sky, the whole thing seemed more like a hazy memory. I kept thinking about it anyway.

Before I knew it, we were pulling into a parking lot and I hadn't said a word the entire time. I got out of the car and listened to the wispy echo of slamming doors resound somewhere beyond me. We were in the middle of nowhere, standing before Sitting Bull College. There was nothing remarkable about its appearance. I had seen a concrete building with classrooms before. It was the quiet world around the school that was something of a wonder. It was almost like nothing existed—nothing but the wind. It was that very wind that made this smooth land so mystical.